to fix what I’d done, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry. The pain was still there, and my fear was too recent. I picked up a bottle of aloe gel and began dabbing the stuff onto my face. It dulled the pain even more.
I glanced down at my sleeve. It was wet but perfectly clean. The predator had wrapped itself around my arm, but it hadn’t left a stain on my clothes.
The predators had hurt my skin in exactly the same way that Summer’s handprint had, and Caramella’s slaps. They were hard to see, too. When they were attacking they looked a lot like heat shimmers in the air. But the predator that had squeezed under the door had gone flat and vanished. I’d looked right at it and hadn’t seen it.
It was invisible. Just like Summer.
Summer had to have one of these predators on her, and she must have been protected from it somehow. Well, “somehow” wasn’t really much of a mystery. Someone had cast a spell on her. She was wrapped up by a predator that wanted to devour her but couldn’t.
The thought gave me shivers.
My face felt a little stiff and I looked like I had a bit of sunburn, but that was all. I’d gotten off easy.
Back in the living room, the pile of goop on the floor looked smaller. Was my mind playing a trick, or was the dead predator dissolving? I took a sock from a drawer in the bedroom and laid it beside the gray mess. Slowly, the goop receded from it. It was vanishing on its own. How considerate.
I took a chair from the desk and sat beside it. My hands were shaking. It was strange that my hands were shaking so long after the fight. I kept control. I breathed as slowly and as evenly as I could while the predator’s corpse vanished in front of me.
Under normal circumstances, I would have burned Melly’s house to the ground. These weren’t normal circumstances because
I looked around. The faint garbage stink was still there. The place felt empty. They weren’t coming back—I knew they weren’t—and to hell with this pretty little house.
I fetched a cotton robe, a candle, and a lighter from the bathroom, then closed all the curtains. I lit the candle and arranged it and the robe beside the edge of the couch. Then I lit the robe. The flames spread down to the throw pillows, and I knew that it would soon spread to the curtains and carpet.
The lock on the front door was still broken. I went out the back way, walked down the block, and got into my car. I didn’t drive by Melly’s house. I wouldn’t have been able to see the flames behind the curtains, and I didn’t want to try.
Five years ago, Melly had been a good friend to me. We’d been part of the same crew, had joked and laughed together. Now, as a wooden man in the society, I was burning her house down.
I didn’t want to think about that, but I felt like a complete bastard.
What to do next? It was after three in the morning; the sun wouldn’t rise for hours, and I’d never be able to sleep. There was no use going to Violet’s place. If Arne had gone out looking for cars to steal, he would have already quit for the night. At best, he’d be at Long Beach, loading stolen SUVs into shipping containers. The very early morning hours were no good for boosting cars, he’d always said. No one else was on the street, and it was too easy to get noticed.
I drove back to the Bigfoot Room. The bar was closed, of course. I parked down the block and walked by the outside. There were no bullet holes in the glass front. None of the shots had gone in that direction. I checked the top of the door; someone had already wiped the words BIGFOOT ROOM away.
I walked around to the alley, half expecting to find stinking clouds of tear gas there, but of course there weren’t. Even the smell was gone.
The security light above the bar’s back door gave me enough light to look around, but first I waved my arms and kicked my feet along the walls in case an invisible person was standing there. I didn’t find any.
The fire exit had a half dozen bullet holes punched through it. My eyes had been closed for most of the gunfire, but it appeared that the bullets had gone in one direction—toward Arne.
Then I noticed my name. I stepped closer to the door and saw that someone had written my name in black Sharpie. It read: RAY LOVES TO HANG AT THE QUILL AND TYRANT ANY TIME OF DAY OR NIGHT.
I touched the ink; it wasn’t wet. It could have been graffiti written by a disgruntled customer, but the way it was phrased made me think it was a message for me, in case I came back. Arne would never have been sloppy enough to leave a message right where the cops would see it, but maybe Bud or Robbie would.
I returned to my car. I knew people could look up addresses with their computers or with more expensive phones than the one I’d thrown away, but I was going to have to make do with the yellow pages.
I went back to my motel room and looked up the Quill and Tyrant. The address was in North Hollywood; I had to drive back the way I’d just come.
The Quill was just a door in a cinder-block box, and of course the lights were out. It was after 5 A.M. I went up to the door anyway and looked through the window. Everything was pitch-black inside, except for one lone beer sign.
When I turned around, there was a cop car at the curb, with a cop inside it asking me what I thought I was doing. I told him I’d lost my credit card and started looking around on the sidewalk. He grunted, looked me over once, and drove away without wishing me luck.
When he’d turned the corner, I walked around the building to the back. There was a dumpster back there along with a row of recycling bins. Behind that, by the cellar door, was a heavily tattooed Mexican man with a crooked nose and full beard. He was smoking a reefer, and he had a .45 S&W in his lap. He looked so stoned he was nearly comatose. “You got lost,” he said.
“I’m looking for Robbie. Is this the right place?”
He laid his hand on his weapon. “Ain’t no Robbie here.”
“My mistake,” I said, and started to leave.
“Hey! I didn’t say you could go. Who’re you?”
